


Time Lords Rarely Bleed

by failsafe



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Blood, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pre-Canon, Puppy Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 04:04:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8356441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: Little Gallifreyans bleed sometimes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Another thing I found in my "mine" tag on tumblr. Written approximately in February 2014? There's no weird underage stuff, just puppy love/affection that may blossom into a ship, I guess. The Doctor is called Theta and the Master is called Koschei in this because of something I read about Old Who lore that I don't necessarily but kind of understand.

Time Lords rarely bleed. It isn’t that they can’t or that they particularly avoid it. But there is something unusual about seeing a Gallifreyan child with dirt and little lacerations crossing the heels of his hands as he runs and runs and runs.

They all likely know what he’s running from, though. They’ve seen it before. Just never with such vigour.

They don’t ask questions.

“Theta!” calls the Proctor, the Time Lord charged with taking each of the young candidates before the Untempered Schism, trained with three lifetimes’ experience in not feeling any particular inclination to _react_ when he catches a glimpse of the swirl of _everything_ when he prompts the children to _stare_. He is very revered. And very kind, but Theta doesn’t remember his dark skin or warm, sad eyes as he turns with big widened eyes and only one thought in mind.

Well, two. One: to run away. Two: to run to something, someone.

“Theta! Come back here, you have not elapsed the allotted time for—” the Proctor attempts one more time.

Somewhere up ahead, back along the path toward the Citadel, young Theta turns his head to look back over his shoulder, some sense of guilt stirring up in between his hearts. He shakes his head and realizes that he cannot stop, even if he wants to. His foot catches and he falls, catching himself against his hands, and then he’s running with a burning sting crossing each of them and two bleeding wounds against each plane of tender, childish flesh.

The Proctor does not need any timekeeping device to realize how very close Theta had come to staying his allotted time, but he hadn’t made it. He’d run away. Compassion—something very dangerous for a Time Lord but inevitable when one lives around a gaping wound in time—overtakes the Proctor and he deems Theta acceptable, skilled, capable. This is one of the first of many such allowances for the young boy who will one day be, would always be, has always been known as the Doctor by his people.

\- - -

When Theta reaches his destination, he does not need to search very long to find whom he had been running to in the dusty laboratory behind the smaller library in the Academy. There is no particular reason that it’s dusty. It isn’t abandoned, but it is almost always undisturbed. There are dozens of brassy, old astronomical instruments—mostly not of Gallifreyan origin—that are kept out of a sense of obligation more than respect. They are, after all, history. And useful, in a pinch.

“Koschei?” he asks, even though he knows where his friend—his friend, his near-constant companion he hadn’t wanted to leave that morning from their room in the dormitory—is hiding. There is a small, guarded nook above the floor, led to by a ladder. Theta is certain there was a purpose for it once, but it is a place that no one else often thinks to go simply because the other students are not so keen on interfering. It is the least complex of their hiding places. Theta does not know why he believes and knows Koschei will be there, but he has a feeling that they will reconvene at this least inconvenient point.

“What did you see?” comes the reverent, dramatic whisper from the shadows. A smaller child with a straightened shock of strawberry hair emerges from the hide and peers down at Theta. He is wearing dark blue, tattered clothing in spite of his father’s wealth and constant provision of more appropriate attire. There is an ancient scrawling which at present Theta cannot read, three lines touching and one very straight. He glances down at his own hands, remembers the blood, and feels a bit dizzy.

“Everything,” he says with a quiet, playfully smug smile that he forces. He is still staring at his hands.

“… Did they do _that_ to you?” Koschei gasps with some scandal in his voice as he makes quick, nimble work of the ladder down to the floor. He doesn’t even hesitate to take his tiny, soft fingers—his father has insistently seen to it that he doesn’t develop the clumsy callouses Theta has, no matter how earnestly Koschei works at their private experiments with him—and brace Theta’s hands beneath. He is a head shorter and a year younger than Theta. Next year, it will be his turn.

“No! No, I fell,” Theta tries to reassure him, but there’s some little glint in Koschei’s eyes that makes him wonder whether or not it was comfort that his friend was looking for.

Koschei’s tiny fingertips brush gently along the faintly discernible line of the wound on Theta’s right hand. The wound is not so deep that it is dangerous yet, but it is still damp and Theta feels it as some of the red liquid comes away even slightly congealed on his fingers. Theta can’t help but furrow his brow and watch as Koschei’s eyes come into steady, hard focus. He can’t quite read what the emotion is and he’s of half a mind to lean forward, bump their foreheads together—a secret and quite taboo gesture that they do in private no matter how often they have been cautioned never to do such a thing after the first time, their first month at the Academy. He wants to read what is in Koschei’s mind, the same way he knows what his name is—his true name, the one given to him by his father.

Then, Koschei seems to remember himself and looks straight up into Theta’s eyes, startling him again.

“It must hurt,” Koschei says, gentle and soft and as if he’s reminding someone.

“Only a little,” Theta assures him. “It’ll get better. Just a little cut. I fell,” he repeats.

Koschei’s thin eyebrows furrow and he looks back down at his own red fingertips and Theta’s hand.

“Let’s go to my estates,” he says, proudly. He reaches up without any hesitation and wipes his fingertips against his cheek in a way that leaves a faint but still quite obvious set of four little trails of red down it. It alarms Theta, but he says nothing. Slowly, or perhaps not very slowly, Theta’s alarm becomes surprise which becomes amusement, which is most of the reason he doesn’t say anything as, when satisfied that his fingers are clean enough, Koschei rummages in his clothes and large pockets until he finds something he’s looking for.

In his little hands, the device looks dwarfing. There is a large round bit in the middle and a worn strap apparently for wearing around a much larger wrist.

“Where did you get that?” Theta asks.

“Where does anyone get anything on this planet?” Koschei responds in a tone that Theta recognizes as mimicry. He cannot imagine whom he is mimicking.

“What is it?” he tries instead.

“I believe,” Koschei replies as he stands up to his full, unimpressive height and looks Theta directly in the eyes while he drapes the too-big straps over their wrists. Theta notices that there seems to be something a little strangely deliberate about the way he binds their wrists together, but he assumes it is to avoid upsetting his wound on that hand. “… that it is a short-range teleport device,” he finishes announcing, very knowledgeably.

Theta trusts him.

“You haven’t got any estates,” he points out dryly as Koschei concentrates on the rounded interface and makes a strange little expression which involves an exposed tongue.

“My father’s estates,” Koschei snips.

“Oh, oh,” Theta agrees, still teasing.

“They will be _mine_ someday,” Koschei says proudly but with a little bite that seems too sharp for someone so small. Theta isn’t afraid.

“Of course they will,” he says, more kindly.

“… Ours,” Koschei says, dangerous and rebellious as he presses down on a button which under his little fingers, surely enough, deposits them (a little uncomfortably) in a sprawling field of red grass.

At least, that’s what Theta thinks he said.

As they deposit themselves wordlessly to lie on the grass and stare up at the never-ending sky, he doesn’t dare ask.


End file.
